COMPARATIVE PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT OF NTENDE AND KILIBA SMALL-SCALE IRRIGATION SCHEMES, RWANDA

Abstract

With the growing population and increasing demand for food, the irrigated agriculture must be improved to provide sustainable food production. With finite freshwater and land resources, and the increasing competition over these precious resou rces, irrigated agricultural use of land and water resources must be improved to produce more food per unit water. Therefore, the information on the performance indicators of productivity and water delivery is needed to devise appropriate water management strategies. The present study attempted to introduce the concept of comparative performance indicators with some irrigation efficiencies indicators as tool to evaluate the performance of two small scale irrigation projects namely Ntende and Rwagitima located in Ntende Rwagitima marshland in Rwanda. To collected data, three framers‟ fields were selected from the head, middle and tail water users of each irrigation projects and primary data were obtained by flow measurements and laboratory soil analysis while secondary (total yields, area irrigated per crop per season, crop types, cropping pattern, planting dates, command area, O&M costs, income generated by irrigation services, cost of irrigation infrastructure and climatic data) data were obtained by inter views, discussions and in collaboration with involved organizations ). The crop water requirements and irrigation requirements were calculated using Cropwat model while the potential or attainable crop yields were simulated using Aquacrop model. The analys is was done using 9 indicators developed by IWMI (Molden, 1998) From the data analysis, Ntende and Kiliba irrigation schemes are performing as follow: output per unit irrigated area was 1285 $/ha and 892 $/ha, output per unit command area was 2232 $/ha and 1565 $/ha ,output per unit irrigation supply was 0.14 $/ha and 0.142 $/ha, output per unit water consumed was 0.169 $/m 3 and 0.12 $/m 3 , relative water supply was 1.66 and 1.27 , relative irrigation supply was 1.39 and 0.96, water delivery capacity was 268% and 374%, gross return on investment was 52.1% and 40.4% and the financ ial self sufficiency varies between 62.2% and 46.6% respectively. The application efficiencies range from 60%-62% and 60%-64% respectively at Ntende and Kiliba while the distribution efficiencies of all fields were found to be close around 100%.